Israel · Hezekiah — a personal deadline extended

2 Kings 20:5-6

Isaiah · ~701 BC · Status: Fulfilled · Confidence: 65%
“Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.”
King James Version · the opening — all 2 verses are below
More of 2 Kings 20 on this site2 Kings 20:1 · 2 Kings 20:17-18

Hezekiah, dying, receives the most personal dated prophecy in Scripture: 'I will heal thee… I will add unto thy days fifteen years.' The regnal arithmetic of Kings checks out — Hezekiah reigns exactly the promised span beyond the crisis — and the sign given was a shadow moving backward.

Read the whole passage — all 2 verses (KJV)

20:5Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.

20:6And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake.

Fulfillment References

2 Kings 20:8-11 Isaiah 38:5-8 2 Chronicles 32:24

Archaeological & Historical Evidence

Hezekiah is among the best-attested Judean kings: his royal seal impressions (bullae) have been excavated in Jerusalem's Ophel ('Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah'), and his tunnel — cut for the Assyrian crisis (2 Kgs. 20:20) — still carries water, its Siloam Inscription (Istanbul) describing the miners' meeting underground.

How Traditions Read This Prophecy

Apostolic (Oneness) PentecostalGod numbers days — and can renumber them. The king who turned his face to the wall and wept got a signed extension; prayer moved a deadline heaven had announced.
JewishThe Talmud discusses Hezekiah's prayer as the model of never despairing 'even when a sharp sword rests on the neck' (b. Ber. 10a).
CatholicHealing, sign, and appointed time — the passage grounds prayer for the sick in God's sovereign freedom.
ProtestantA private, dated, checkable prophecy inside the same chapters as the great public one — the same God handles empires and one man's fever.
AcademicThe Hezekiah bullae (Mazar excavations, published 2015) and the Siloam Inscription make this reign a fixed point of biblical archaeology; the fifteen-year figure coheres with the regnal data.

Scholarship & Sources

Eilat Mazar, the Hezekiah bulla publication (2015); Siloam Inscription (KAI 189); b. Berakhot 10a on the prayer.

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